Italy

Hidden Drama in Rome

I found this Colorful Shop in Rome.

While we were in Rome we passed this little mini restaurant, street kitchen, kiosk, souvenir shop many times, and at night, it was full of lights.

Just behind this little street shop, there are stairs leading down the Tiber, which is the river winding its way slowly through Rome.

We went down there during the day, to shoot the Castel Sant’Angelo from below. We had the feeling, that it was probably not the safest place in Rome after dark. And yet, we had seen many night shots from down there.

We decided to take the Blue Hour up around the Vatican, and then work our way down here to Castel Sant’Angelo, and take the late blue hour or the first of the night. And then we would make a judgment of the situation. Would it be safe to go down to the Tiber or not.

By the time we got down to this kitchen on wheels, at was a bit darker than we had planned. A few people hung around in the area, and I started the descent of the stairs, looking carefully around.

I didn’t get more than 10 steps down, and the stairs were splashed in what looked exactly like fresh blood, and I turned around. Even if I wanted a photo from down there, I didn’t want it that bad.

Instead, I have been playing around with one of the daytime photos I shot. I don’t like daytime photos that much, and I don’t a lot of them. But what I have come to like, is to put textures on them.

Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome is fascinating. I wouldn’t go as far as claiming that the building is beautiful, but spectacular it is.

The textures take the daylight away, in particular in this one, where I have gone berserk. I have begun to use AuroraHDR. Another neat feature in AuroraHDR is, that it support Textures too. However, my poor old MacBook Air from 2011, didn’t like 5 layers of textures on top of a 36 megapixel HDR.

Fair enough, it adds up in the memory, and my Mac only has 4 Gb, which is far too little to be doing heavy image processing. 8 Gb would have been much better.

When you make textured images, it is important to use several layers of different textures. A single layer will be too dominant and too easy to see ‘what is’.

Textures are typically images of a wall, ground, iron, paper, anything flat, and by using several textures, you get a complex mix, not only of structure but also of colors. And if you can find something, that works nicely together

The trick is to find some textures, that work nicely together, both in colors, and structure. And depending on the image you use, the blending changes, and you find that you have to apply textures that work well with your photo.And if you can find something, that works nicely together

I never apply a texture evenly on an image. I always add a mask and paint in and out the bits I like and don’t like. My primary objects, like the Castel Sant’Angelo in this image, I give a less texture, to enhance it.

If you find my articles interesting and consider getting AuroraHDR, please use the link on my web page and support me that way. I only recommend software and tools that I use.

I am not ‘bought’ to say nice things with sugar on top. I say what I think and feel about products. I get nothing for writing these articles, but I do get a kickback if you use my link to buy AuroraHDR, as well as if you use my 15% discount coupon code “caughtinpixels” for buying Buy Photomatix Pro. Thanks.

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–Jacob Surland

You can buy pearls on Rialto Bridge

Nice Pearl Shop on top of the Rialto Bridge in Venice.

We didn’t buy any pearls when we were on Rialto Bridge. We were far too busy shooting photos. Half the bridge was under reconstruction, but we still managed to get some great shots. One of the things I like, about shooting in Italy at famous locations, is that there usually is a band playing some music. People are in general friendly and happy, and moving around with selfie sticks, trying to shoot themselves with their loved ones. I wouldn’t dare to put any of my cameras on a selfie stick though!

These are a couple of my favorites from same evening:

Warm light on Piazza san Marco

A passage leading into the Piazza San Marco in Venice. You can see the Palace of the Doge in the far distance.

On our way back to our hotel, after a long morning of photography in Venice, we had to cross Piazza San Marco to get back to our hotel. Just before we entered the Piazza, the most wonderful golden light met us. And even though I had stopped shooting, I put up my tripod once more.

The dynamic range is incredibly high in a photo like this, because of the dark passage and the sunrise exploding on Piazza San Marco. It requires shooting some extra stops to cover all light. I shot this both from -4 to +2 and from -5 to +1. As I got home, I can see, that the correct thing to do, would have been to shoot from -5 to +3, that would have been nine shots using my Nikon D800. But, as you can see I managed with a little bit less.

Photo by: Jacob Surland, www.caughtinpixels.com Licensed creative commons non-commercial v4.0. No derivative Work. Protected by Pixsy.com.

Cool Saxophone player in Sicily

Notice the cool saphone player having a fantastic time.

The Piazza IX April in Taormina on Sicily has one the most stunning views over the bay of Naxos. The whole Piazza is like a balcony with a gorgeous view. Happy people are walking around, shooting photos (many selfies too), and a couple of bands were playing music. (I do love having live music when I shoot photos). And this saxophone player, was fantastic. Sitting on his chair playing, he just made this evening magic. He probably makes every evening magic, come to think of it.

About the making of this photo

I had been standing on this staircase shooting some photos, when I suddenly noticed the saxophone player, and just knew he was the primary subject for my photo. I shot it using my brand new Sony A6000 and my Sony 10-18mm lens.

I bought the A6000 because of the combination of a great camera in a small body. My other camera bodies are Sony A7R, Nikon D800 and Nikon D600. All are phenomenal cameras, and the Sony A6000 is the kid brother in this lot. But I wanted a small super light weight camera and I wanted to see what I could get out of it, and I was not disappointed. It produces fantastic quality images. I just have to be careful on the ISO. It is a smaller sensor than the others, and it can not shoot at as high an ISO as the other cameras. However, as you can see, it can perfectly easy be used when shooting at night using a tripod.

The EXIF info for this image is ISO 100, f/7.1 and the exposure times for the three HDR shots are: 0,6 seconds (-2 exposure), 2.5 seconds (0 exposure) and 10 seconds (+2 exposure).

In short – the Sony A6000 is a fantastic camera. Of course I can tell the difference to my Sony A7R, but never the less a great camera in an incredible small body.

The Famous View from Rialto Bridge

The famous view of Canal Grande seen from the Rialto Bridge.

Crossing the Rialto Bridge is a must do experience when visiting Venice. And if you have the option to plan it, try to do it at sunset. The houses along Canal Grande look just awesome with the lights and colors. Stay and watch the traffic for a while. Gondolas, Varporettos, taxi boats, and ordinary people cruising in their small speed boats. It’s a very busy area, the bridge itself included.

This photo I shot using my 24-70mm Sony Zeiss lens attached to my Sony A7R. As you can see, the light is fading quickly, but I really didn’t want a long exposure. Opened the lens to it’s maximum, which is ‘only’ f/4, and then I cranked up the ISO to 2500. I got a shutter speed fast enough to freeze the three gondolas navigating.

I shot it as a 3 shot HDR photo, but the gondolas and for the water and boats, I only used the one exposure, the middle one. The bright exposure is too long, and the boats get blurry, and the dark was, well too dark.

Lamp posts at Piazza San Marco

I ran around Piazza San Marco to capture as many shots as possible with this georgeous light.

I just love Piazza San Marco, even during the crowded daytime hours. Photography, of course, is difficult when there are many people, but it is a very beautiful place. And in the morning, it’s just stunning, and the people have almost disappeared. Believe it or not, I did not clone any people out of this one. I did have to clone out a number of dust bins and garbage. However, the Venezians put a lot of pride in keeping their large piazzas clean.

Visiting Milan by Accident – and saw One for Greco

This photo is a ‘pseudo HDR’ photo, which means that I have processed it like an HDR, but only from a single exposure. To get the best result, I prefer to make 2 virtual copies in Lightroom, so that I have a -2, 0 and +2. The lightest one will be very noise, especially because I shot this at ISO 800. I crank up the noise reduction all the way to the top on the light one, and the other ones moderately high.

We visited Milan quite by accident. Milan has some pretty awesome things to photograph. I really love these vintage trams. I saw this one on the way back to the hotel.

But how do you get to Milan by accident? Well, we had planned a train trip to Venice, but there was a train strike in Germany, and we had to find other means of transport to get to Venice. As it turned out, plane tickets were insanely expensive to Venice, on the dates that matched our hotel booking. While plane tickets for Milan, on the other hand, were quite cheap. If we stayed for the night on our way to Venice and back again, we got everything included for the same price, as the refunded train tickets.

Milan turned out to have some pretty awesome places to photograph, like the ‘Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II’ shopping mall. It’s one the oldest shopping malls in the world, and definitely worth a visit! The same goes for the Milan Cathedral.

Palace of the Doge in Venice

The Palace of the Doge in Venice is a master piece in detailed architecture. This photo is a 5 shot HDR made using Photomatix Pro.

I had to wait quite a while to get a photo of the Palace of the Doge in Venice without too many people. And by using a fairly long exposure, I have been able to merge several photos and get rid of the few people there. A family kept standing watching the beautiful clouds, shooting photos of each other. And when they finally moved on, another group stopped.

Two principles are good for getting rid of people. One is shoot several shots, and waiting long enough for people to move between the shots. The second principle is to have long exposure times of 5-10 seconds at least, which will make people almost disappear. My longest exposure was 10 seconds.

Even if I had got rid of most people, I still had a lot of cloning to do. No less than 11 dustbins where within the frame.

Tip: Pseudo HDR

Pantheon Reflecting the Sun Setting

Pantheon is one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen and I was even rewarded with the most beautiful sunset.

The photo is an old one, shot with my ancient Canon 400D. How to salvage an old photo? I took this photo as a single RAW on my old Canon 400D using a Sigma 10-20mm lens. I didn’t have a tripod, but the light was so gorgeous I just had to shoot the scene. What I did was to stand as still as I could and just fire away 20 shots hoping one would be sharp enough. The ISO I had turned up to 400, which is the highest acceptable ISO on that camera, and I the raised the f-stop to the highest value the lens allowed (lowest number). That gave me a shutter speed of 1/13 seconds, which requires a very steady hand. But I managed.

Tip: Try making Pseudo HDR photos from single exposure RAWs
In the processing had to major issues. I had to get a better balance between light and shadows and to increase the sharpness. To get better balance between the shadows and the light areas, I made a Pseudo HDR photo. To do that I made in Lightroom two artificial exposures by making virtual copies. One I made a -2 and the other I made +2. These to exposures I gave some strong noise reduction, and then I exported all three to Photomatix and tone mapped them. The result was awesome. Not as good as if I had shot three proper bracketed shots, but good enough.

The sharpness I achieved by duplicating the layer in Photoshop and then applying a fairly strong Unsharp Mask (really a bad name for a sharpening rool). That did some really good things to the roof of the Pantheon. I blended in the good parts of the sharpened image – the rest I didn’t use.

Caught In Pixels